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From: hugh@fivegl.co.nz (Hugh Grierson)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: INFORMIX bug?
Keywords: informix bug 4gl
Message-ID: <1990Nov26.121526.28416@fivegl.co.nz>
Date: 26 Nov 90 12:15:26 GMT
References: <8330@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Reply-To: hugh@fivegl.co.nz (Hugh Grierson)
Organization: 5GL International Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand
Lines: 34

In article <8330@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> jwas@PacBell.COM (Joe Wasik) writes:
>We have this rather annoying problem with Informix-4GL.  When an Informix-4GL
>application runs and accesses a database, it starts a back-end named sqlexec.
>This back-end is supposed to die when the Informix-4GL application terminates,
>but it doesn't.  In our case, since the Informix-4GL application starts up
>other background jobs, the sqlexec program hangs around until those other jobs
>are finished and it then interferes with the logoff process.
>...

A guess - is it possible that 4GL is not closing the write-end of its pipe
to sqlexec after fork()ing, and is not using the close-on-exec flag.  Then 
no matter what you do in the parent 4GL program, sqlexec will not know that the
pipe has closed, and possibly may not terminate.  I can't test this theory,
as the behaviour is correct on our machine, but you could try it by running
a C program something like this from your 4GL program (with "without 
waiting"):

	/* untested */
	/* apologies for incorrectness/unportability */
	#include <stdio.h>
	main()
	{
	    int i;
	    for (i=3; i<_NFILE; i++)
		close(i);
	    sleep(100000);
	}

Let me know...

-- 
                               | Hugh Grierson         | hugh@fivegl.co.nz 
                               | 5GL International Ltd | PH:  +64.9.3021621
                               | Auckland, New Zealand | FAX: +64.9.3021617